Fishing...Good! Phishing...Bad!

I think it's terrible that my previously happy visions of fishing down at the creek are being replaced by visions of an e-mail inbox full of annoying, deceitful, sleazy e-mails. I must admit, however, that I was a little doubtful that Steve would actually get at least one phishing e-mail during the 30 minutes we spent on the air this morning. Well, I'm a believer now! Sure enough, when he checked his inbox, there was an e-mail from someone he didn't know that had "Your account" in the subject line.

For those of you who may not know what phishing is, I urge you to visit the How Stuff Works website for a complete description of the despicable behavior that has migrated online from fraudulent phone calls to fraudulent e-mails, instant messages, pop-up boxes and chat room conversations. In short, phishing is an attempt by a person or persons unknown to you to try and ferret out personal information about various financial accounts you may have. Once the perpetrator has collected the information, he or she may use it to make charges to your credit card or steal cash from your bank account. Marty appears to be a man of great self-control when it comes to responding to questionable e-mails....he just deletes any he gets from people he doesn't recognize! Way to go, Marty...if only the rest of us were so strong. If you've ever been the recipient of an e-mail you suspect may fall into the phishing category, please take the time to read "Protection from Phishers" on the How Stuff Works website. Remember, phishing scams only work if you play your part so don't be fooled!

We also discussed the newest version of Microsoft's anti-adware/anti-spyware feature, Windows Defender. Unlike the BETA 1 version which was based on an application, the new version will be incorporated into Vista as a service. You can download it now if you're a Windows XP user. Note: Since it's not an application, you won't see a little icon in your taskbar that lets you know it's running. It runs invisibly in the background. Before you download it, take a few minutes and read about how it works to protect your system from adware/spyware.

Last but not least, I shared a tip for everyone out there who may be interested in saving and/or printing a copy of the links in their Internet Explorer Favorites. The file you save will be in HTML format, so you can easily attach it to an e-mail and share it. If you'd prefer a printed copy, you can do that, too. Just follow the instructions on Microsoft's website to save and print your Favorites! Note: When you get to the print dialog window in Step 10, you'll need to click the Options tab to print a table of your links that will include the URL addresses!

Don't forget that you can join my co-host, Kristi "Chickitoo" Hicks and me every Friday morning in our virtual Coop for an online discussion about all sorts of tekkie topics! We'll be talking about computer peripherals this Friday at 9:30am, so grab our microphone and share your views!